Finnair slides down European lists on punctuality

Baggage handling a further cause for concern

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The Finnish national carrier Finnair, which has traditionally ranked high among European airlines, has clearly lost ground in the statistics measuring some of the key quality indicators of European carriers, such as the regularity and punctuality of departures as well as luggage handling.
      Last year, Finnair made it into the top six carriers only in the regularity of service category for the short and mid-range regular flights and ranked no higher than 18th in the chart measuring the meticulousness of luggage handling.
     
The punctuality and baggage performance information is collected and published by the Association of European Airlines, AEA.
      Initially the idea was to provide the industry with operational data to address inefficiencies in the system.
      The statistical comparison includes data about the level of services of 28 European carriers.
     
The comparison reveals at least one fundamental cause for the lowering of service quality, even for Finnair. The most punctual are small airlines offering primarily non-stop flights between their home airport and foreign destinations.
      The most troublesome are the highly networked carriers with an intricately weaved plexus of long-haul flights and their feeder traffic. In such systems one disturbance reflects throughout the chain, causing several delays.
      The AEA statistics attest to this fundamental snag. Europe’s most punctual short-distance airline in the light of the arrival punctuality was Luxair, the national carrier of Luxemburg. The most regular airline was Iceland’s Icelandair, which - as the only carrier in Europe - flew every single one of its scheduled flights. The most punctual long-haul carrier was Austrian Airlines.
     
Large international airlines taking passengers to the four corners of the world, in turn, were riddled with delays.
      Finnair is still reasonably small by global standards, but it has clearly developed into a networked airline specialising in flights to Asia.
      Therefore it ranked tenth in Europe in the arrival punctuality of short-haul flights, ninth in the arrival punctuality of long-haul flights, and tenth in the regularity of these flights. An arrival is classified as punctual if the plane reached the arrival gate within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.
     
At least according to the AEA statistics, Finnair’s achilles heel is its baggage performance, in which the company ranked no higher than 18th in Europe. 15.8 baggage items per a thousand passengers were late. This translates to 128,000 pieces of luggage per year.
      In this respect Finnair got beaten by its Scandinavian rival SAS, but was still clearly ahead of the large network carriers. British Airways, for one, ranked as number 25 with 26.5 delayed baggage deliveries per a thousand passengers. KLM, in turn, ranked 23rd.
      AEA measures first and foremost the delays in baggage handling. By some miracle, nearly all pieces of luggage do eventually find their owners. Only 15 percent of the lost luggage remains missing 48 hours after the arrival of the flight.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  More woes for holidaymakers as flights delayed (2.1.2008)
  One in five flights is delayed at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport (18.12.2007)
  Tight timetables for Finnair long-haul flights; delays continue to trouble travellers (9.1.2008)

Links:
  AEA

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